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A federal civil rights investigation of the Ferguson, Mo., police force has concluded that the department violated the Constitution when it policed to raise money and with a racial bias toward African-Americans, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the report.The investigation, the source says, concluded that blacks were disproportionately targeted by the police and the justice system, which has led to a lack of trust in police and courts and to few partnerships for public...

In Depth

Retired U.S. Sen. John Danforth today blamed Missouri’s nasty political climate – and an alleged anti-Semitic “whispering campaign” -- for state Auditor Tom Schweich’s suicide, and he called on officials in both parties to “make Tom’s death a turning point in our state.”

Frustration gripped local singer and actress Marty Casey in the days after Michael Brown’s death at the hands of then-Officer Darren Wilson. This weekend, a little more than six months later, Casey and 10 other people launched Show Me Arts Academy, the organization born from her call.

The Rev. Larry Rice has asked a federal judge to block the pending closure of his homeless shelter at the New Life Evangelistic Center in downtown St. Louis, saying efforts by the city of St. Louis to shutter the facility violate the non-profit's freedom of religion.

Former Post-Dispatch and St. Louis American reporter Ken Cooper just published his first book, "Portraits of Purpose: A Tribute to Leadership." The book is a collaboration with the photographer Don West and chronicles the lives of influential Bostonian African Americans. Yet, nestled within the book’s 116 profiles are the stories of five St. Louisans.

Using a PowerPoint voting system, more than half the people attending the Ferguson Commission’s seventh meeting on Monday night said that no, they don’t think racial tensions in the St. Louis area will ever be fully eliminated.

The Politically Speaking podcast team – Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies – this week welcomed state Sen. Will Kraus, R-Lee’s Summit and a 2016 candidate for Missouri secretary of state.

But first, the duo joined Jefferson City correspondent Marshall Griffin in commemorating the late state Auditor Tom Schweich, who died last Thursday from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. A memorial service is to be held Tuesday at his church in Clayton.

“Biology shows us there are no real races in the world,” Washington University physical anthropology professor Robert Wald Sussman told “St. Louis on the Air” host Don Marsh on Monday. “Humans are just humans, basically.”

Sussman explores how religion, pseudo-science and prejudice have been used since the Spanish Inquisition to promote racism, eugenics and anti-immigration policies in his book “The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea.”

At least half of all prison suicides are committed by inmates held in so-called solitary confinement, according to several state and national studies.

While a first-of-its-kind report on segregation practices in federal prisons shows improvement, with the number of inmates held in solitary confinement on the decline. Still, said U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., “There’s still much more work to be done.”